State To Appeal Ruling In Child-custody Case

State To Appeal Ruling In Custody Case

Urged on by thousands of angry residents, Connecticut's attorney general said Monday he will appeal a judge's decision that took a year-old baby from her would-be parents and returned her to the teenager mother who had abandoned her the day of her birth.

Presented with petitions signed by about 3,500 people, State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he will file court papers in the next few days seeking to overturn last week's decision returning the baby to her mother, Gina Pellegrino of Milford, and he also will ask Judge John T. Downey to reconsider the ruling.

Blumenthal announced his decision Monday after consulting with officials from the state Department of Children and Youth Services. Blumenthal's office and other state agencies have been receiving angry telephone calls, petitions and letters since Downey's decision last week.

On Monday, Pellegrino's attorney said the young woman had planned to live with her child at a New Haven shelter for women with children, but the attention by the press prompted her to move in with a friend temporarily.

She said she believes the appeal will fail. "I don't think there are any legal issues to raise," said the mother's attorney, Angelica Allen of New Haven.

Blumenthal said there were. The attorney general said the judge erred by reopening the child's custody case earlier this year and again last week by removing the child from Cindy and Jerry LaFlamme, the New Britain couple who have been raising the child as their own for the past eight months.

The judge, who has not commented publicly on the case, could not be reached for comment.

Blumenthal said it would be up to Rose Alma Senatore, the DCYS commissioner, to decide where to place the child during the appeal.

"What should be done is whatever is in the best interests of the child," Blumenthal said. "On the basis of what I know now, I would hope that a return to the [prospective] adoptive parents would be seriously considered."

The LaFlammes had named the child Megan Marie. They had not

adopted her at the time of Downey's decision, but they were in the process of doing so, believing that Megan's mother would never return. They have appealed Downey's decision that kept them from being a party in the custody hearings. Blumenthal said his office supports the LaFlammes' appeal.

Meanwhile, the General Assembly's judiciary committee has decided to schedule a hearing in the next 10 days to determine if changing the state's adoption laws could avoid a similar situation, but its action would not affect the LaFlamme case, said Rep. Richard D. Tulisano, D-Rocky Hill, a committee co-chairman.

If the hearing identifies areas of the law that need to be changed, a special legislative session probably would be held in August, he said. Tulisano said the state should alter the law to give prospective adoptive parents more say in juvenile custody hearings.

Downey originally terminated Pellegrino's rights to be the legal parent after the then-18-year-old abandoned the child hours after her birth at the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven in June 1991.

Five months later, remorseful over abandoning the child, Pellegrino retained a lawyer and asked the judge to reconsider. He did, supporting his decision with two state statues.

Blumenthal said Downey had erred in citing those laws.

First, Blumenthal said Downey erred by reopening the civil judgment made when the baby was a month old. Downey said in his ruling that a state statute allowing him to reopen a civil judgment for up to four months after it was made allowed him to reconsider his decision to terminate Pellegrino's legal rights to her daughter.

"That in our view was an error," Blumenthal said. "The purpose of the statute is finality and permanency."

In the second case, Blumenthal faulted Downey's logic that because the child was still a ward of the state, the court still had jurisdiction in the matter. It was this statute that allowed Downey to reopen the judgment after the four-month appeal period had expired. Downey excused Pellegrino's tardiness in filing an appeal, saying she had been given bad advice by a DCYS social worker who told her she would never see the child again.

Blumenthal said the second statute was meant to apply only to relatively minor legal matters, such as reports on how a child is faring.

Blumenthal said that even if Downey returns the child to the LaFlammes, the state will pursue the appeal to avoid Downey's interpretation of the law from becoming a precedent.

After his press conference, Blumenthal was presented with a box of petitions asking the state to overturn or appeal the judge's decision.